Pay review body recommends 4% pay rise for teachers - government screwed

[noblegiraffe]

It is being reported that the teachers independent pay review body has recommended a pay rise of close to 4% for teachers. The government told it to recommend 2.8%. Schools can afford about 1.3% with funding increases, anything above that will have to come out of budget cuts.

If the government reject the 4% and go for 2.8%, both main teachers' unions have said that they will immediately start balloting for strike action. If any pay rise is unfunded, strike action is also on the cards.

This is not 'teachers demanding more money', this is the independent pay review body saying that teachers need to be paid more because the profession is underpaid and in crisis.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/strb-recomments-teacher-pay-rise-close-to-4-reports/

This is following a 5.0%, 6.5% and 5.5% increase over the last three years, meaning with this further pay proposal teachers could receive a pay rise of over 21% in four years.

Agreed that before that payrises were minimal for many years but it wasn’t 5.5% in one year only.

https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/12/teacher-pay-what-does-the-evidence-mean-for-schools/

Exactly - outside of London teachers pay is a lot for what they do (and the required level of education and competitiveness of recruitment).

Teachers aren't striking over anything yet. There hasn't been a ballot. It may be a strike over how the pay rise is funded.

If you think teachers are fairly reasonably paid you need to explain why the independent pay review body has reviewed all the evidence, including the government saying that they should recommend 2.8% and have come up with something closer to 4%. And why we can't recruit enough teachers and kids are going without.

Teachers are paid a reasonably good salary relative to the average, but they should be paid much more than they are.

The situation with school budgets is horrific in many places though. If people really knew, they’d be shocked. I am friends with a couple of teachers at my kids’ primary school and at present there isn’t even money to buy paper. When the paper runs out, teachers buy a ream themselves from a shop and bring it in.

The TPS was reformed. Teachers now pay more and will get less.
If by ‘reform’ you mean more like that, then it will make teaching even less attractive as a career. The deal always was that people sacrificed the opportunity to earn very large salaries in exchange for being securely looked after in terms of reasonable salary, working conditions and pension.

It could be reformed, but I think it would cost more in the short term which doesnt help us now, so it's hard to do. The existing liabilities would still need to be paid without any teacher contributiond and on top of that individul pots would need to be paid for.

But that is my point. Issues with teacher retention and recruitment go way beyond anything to do with pay. I know loads of teachers. Most don’t strike or leave about pay, but because of issues with their working conditions or the education system being mismatched with their values, as they actually care deeply about our children.

I think teachers should absolutely be paid more and that be properly funded, but it’s actually irrelevant now- I think many will still strike and leave now even if they are paid more.

So you're going to make all workers pay higher taxes for a minority of workers to benefit from??

Nail on the head. Fund the teacher's payrise by reducing their over inflated pension entitlements.

the funding of a pay rise is not the teachers problem. That’s for the govt to sort out.

what pay rise did MPs award themselves this year - again an independent review board - which MPs use to justify their own rises.

it’s not a race to the bottom. Professionals should be paid fairly.

But younger teachers aren’t joining the pension scheme because they can’t afford it. That’s not helping recruitment either. Many would probably prefer to be paid more now when they have homes to buy and children to raise.

The difficulty is their pension contributions are paying the pensions of retired teachers now.

To be fair, the idea of paying a teacher is that the children they teach benefit. Not just the teacher themselves. Then as a result society benefits from a well educated workforce.

I was in the tps for over a decade and my predicted pension is less than 4k a year so it’s not the license to cruise when you’re 55 that people seem to think it is. In addition, every year I was in it, my national insurance contributions weren’t full so now I don’t teach I have to make up over a decade of national insurance contributions so I will hopefully be able to claim a full state pension when I’m older (can’t make up the difference in NI, you have to do more years). So the teachers in it don’t get it on top of full state pension they get it instead of full state pension.

I would only go back to state school teaching if my kids were starving in the street - a 4% pay rise is absolutely fuck all for the relentless stress.

But how would that work. The current contributions pay the existing liabilities which the tax payer would still have to pay, but they lose the 10% contribution from current teachers and they would also have to pay an actual contribution to current teachers as well and fund a payrise on top. It might all come out different budgets but it would all be tax..

I mean it would save money eventually as people die off and new people don't have the scheme but the government thinks in 5 year blocks.

The problem with this is that if teachers continue to leave in the numbers that are currently leaving, and if recruitment continues to fall below the numbers required, ultimately we are not going to have enough teachers. This is already the case in some subjects, STEM is a case in point. The school where my DC teaches has lost three science teachers this year. They have had no applications to replace them. This means that the teachers who are left are trying to cover those classes as well as their own. This leads to fragmented progress in those classes. It means that A level students are not necessarily being taught by a specialist, or even someone who has an a level in that subject themselves. These teachers will become even more exhausted and some will leave. Repeat the cycle until there are no specialist STEM teachers left. Who is then going to teach the next generation of doctors? Other subjects will have similar situations. Not paying teachers appropriately (including funding it properly) has enormous implications for the future of the country and, imo, is a very short-sighted strategy.

I accept that this may be an ignorant thing to say as I am not a teacher nor are my kids at school yet, but I frequently hear other mothers complaining about the lack of support within schools. If more money is going to be spent on schools I’d be happier if it went towards SEN support and teaching assistants on the basis that:

1. they make teachers lives easier
2. it offers additional employment opportunities
3. most importantly, it directly benefits the students

I’m not saying that the independent body was wrong in their review, but I also think that if every body within the public sector was assessed by an independent body they would come to similar findings seeing as we’ve all been stifled for over a decade.

The government has really limited funds, our prison system is appalling, we only just got past the jr doctor strikes and train strikes! If we suddenly have more money for pay rises a whole review of the public sector should be undertaken.

You think state education is funded by taxpayers for the benefit of teachers?

There needs to be a huge recruitment drive re teaching because the narrative around it is very very negative. It's undoubtedly a tough job but I have many friends & family who love it & believe the total remuneration is a good deal.
I think it's a bit like medicine in that a lot of people who go into teaching or medicine have family in that field. Many younger people just don't even consider it for a career when in fact they may make excellent teachers.

There’s currently a huge recruitment drive for teaching happening on mumsnet. All those promoted posts about returning to teaching?

Were you part time? Is £4k the payout at retirement age, or earlier? Absolutely should not affect your state pension. £4K for a decade of work is probably average or slightly higher for most pension schemes, so if worked 40 years would be £16k plus £12k state pension.

Interestingly more teachers returned to the profession after a break last year particularly at a secondary level.

There’s currently a huge recruitment drive for teaching happening on mumsnet. All those promoted posts about returning to teaching?

😆 I think it needs to be a little wider than that.

Yeah I know, I just thought it was funny that Mumsnet was being targeted for teacher recruitment.

I doubt the pay is what is behind the retention problem

I think this is the wrong move for lots of reasons:

1. Schools do not have any money for a pay increase. It is and will lead to redundancies and more cut backs in an already crumbling system.
2. It increases the public demonisation of teachers, we are all greedy and get enough money and holidays.
3. If you ask teachers, pay isn’t the main reason for a recruitment and retention crisis, particularly retention. I would much rather money was put into schools to hire and train more teachers, pay for support staff and get SEND children the support they need. This creates a headline that detracts from the issues and puts the blame on teachers when we are all just trying our very best in a near impossible job.
4. I don’t want to strike for increased pay. I want to strike to draw attention to the major major issues in schools and the crisis we are in. As I said above, this pay issue detracts from that. It will be portrayed as teachers failing their students when the reality is the government and Trusts are failing our students.